Fashionistas (21 page)

J
ane blames the botox injections.

“In the old days you always knew exactly what Marge was up to. You’d see those tiny spidery lines between her overgrown brows and you knew she was hatching something. God, she was easy to read. Knit eyebrows meant she was thinking up petty revenge for some imagined wrong and deeply furrowed brows meant she was plotting your ruin. Now, thanks to modern science, it’s impossible to know for sure,” Jane says scornfully, as if science doesn’t erase her laugh lines every six months. “But that’s where you come in.”

“Me?” I ask cautiously, wondering if I should try making a break for the door while there’s still time. Something is up. Something very unpleasant is in the works. I can tell because her eyes are shining brightly with anticipation and her lips are turned upward at the corners. Jane only looks happy when she’s planning someone’s demise.

“You’ll be my eyes and my ears,” she says, her fingers tapping gently on the shiny wood veneer of her desk. “I want you to stick close to her—but not too close. We don’t want
it to be obvious. Linger outside her office when she’s on the telephone. Poke around her desk. Rifle through her computer files. Get her Outlook password. Tail her when she goes out to lunch.”

I listen politely and take notes, but I have no intention of following through. Despite what Jane thinks, I’m not her man in Havana.

“Give George a call,” she says. “He’ll hook you up with equipment.”

George is our tech writer. He lives in a cabin in Montana and writes a monthly column on expensive toys. “George?” I ask. I can’t imagine what he has to do with Jane’s spy games.

She nods. “George is doing an article on the sophisticated surveillance equipment of the stars. He should have some names and numbers of local outfitters. Put whatever you buy on your credit card and expense it.”

“All right,” I say agreeably, as if buying illegal bugging devices has just jumped to the top of my to-do list for the day. It hasn’t. I’ll give George a call in case Jane checks up on me, but I won’t spend my lunch hour scouring New York for complicated cameras and tiny microphones that can pass through the eye of a needle. I’ll keep a low profile for a couple of days and then report back from my fact-finding mission with the details of a small invented intrigue to pacify Jane.

“I want regular reports,” she says, continuing her list of demands. I’ve been in her office for almost twenty-three minutes now and she’s done nothing but issue orders—call the caterer, set up an appointment with Anita, send a fax to the Karpfinger Gallery, write promotional copy for the Gilding the Lily press release. In recent weeks I’ve become Jane’s aide-de-camp. Despite my senior editor title, I’ve been relegated to the position of assistant. It’s no great mystery how it happened—this is how Jane treats people whose soul she thinks she owns. “I want to know what she’s up to every minute of every day. Knowledge is power. Now that she knows I’ve im
proved upon her idea, she’ll be seething with anger,” Jane says, so pleased with this notion of Marguerite as an irate bull with steam pouring out of her ears that she shivers. “All right—shoo. I have more important things to do and you’re in my way.”

I leave her office and brush by Jackie, who is pretending to be engrossed in reading a memo, but she’s really calculating the minutes I’ve been behind closed doors with her boss. Jackie, resentful of the time that I’ve been spending with Jane, is convinced I’m after her job. The idea of anyone wanting to do a second tour of duty with Jane is so ludicrous it makes me smile. But Jackie thinks I’m gloating and glares bitterly at my departing back.

A
lex wants to know why I’m still at
Fashionista.

For forty-five minutes he listens patiently as I vent about Jane’s vindictiveness and Dot’s vapidness and the general celebrity whoring that my life has been slowly reduced to in the past five years. Then he tilts his head to the side, examines me quietly and asks the obvious question: Why? Why do I put up with it? Why haven’t I moved on already? Why are the seeds of my discontent watered and nurtured and loved?

“I think
love
is a bit strong,” I say, feeling defensive.

“You know my reason for hanging around. What’s yours?”

There are several answers to this question and I consider them all carefully as I wait for our food to arrive. The most truthful answer is that I’m an inert creature. The next truth is that I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life so I might as well stay where I am. The truth after that is that I’m afraid of change—I’m terrified of going from the frying pan into the fire. But I don’t want to give any of these answers. Alex is still new to me. His scent, his laugh, the way
his lips feel on my cheek—these things are still gleaming silver candlesticks and I don’t want to tarnish them too soon. I don’t want to reveal my inert, passive, fearful self. Even though he’s emotionally unavailable and we have no future, I’m still trying to make a good first impression.

“Have you heard of Pieter van Kessel?” I ask, launching into a detailed explanation of his work and my idea for a series of articles. It seems like I’m changing the subject, but I’m not. Van Kessel is at the heart of why I stay. It’s not enough anymore that I work in a kinder, gentler office. It’s not enough anymore that we’re freed from Jane’s petty despotism. The scales have fallen from my eyes—thanks, in part, to Maya’s twenty zillion stages of grief—and I’m left with a desire to give the world more than a list of ten really good shampoos. I don’t want to settle for the black-and-white practicality of consumer advice. That’s where Marguerite comes in. She’s a hope to hang your hat on.

“Sounds good,” Alex says, after I finish selling him the job-interview version of myself—proactive, resourceful and creative. “And that’s definitely not something Jane would be interested in. When I first took over as events editor six years ago, I tried pitching parties that were a little bit outside our well-trod path—important events that weren’t supported by A-list stars—and she shot me down immediately. Actually, ‘shot me down’ is overstating the case. It implies that she paid attention to me.”

The waiter brings two platters of cheeseburgers to our table and makes room for a separate plate of steaming French fries. We’re at a greasy-spoon hole-in-the-wall deep in the East Village that serves the best burger in all of Manhattan. This is the first time I’ve taken Alex to one of my haunts—all our other dates have been planned and executed by him. I don’t know why, but I woke up this morning determined to share something I enjoy with him. “Is that why you decided to go back to school?” I ask. He wouldn’t be the first
person Jane sent scurrying for bluer skies, though he is, as far as I know, the only one to keep his foot in the door.

“Nah, I didn’t mind being ignored by Jane. As you know, I’ve worked that to my advantage.”

“So when did the help-Alex-become-an-architect scheme first occur to you?”

He holds the ketchup bottle over his plate and waits for it to drip out. Then he puts it down. “I don’t know. It wasn’t a decision I can recall making. I started taking one class a semester just because tuition reimbursement was one of the job’s perks and it seemed stupid not to take advantage of it. Somehow I ended up in a drawing class with an excellent instructor who suggested I try architecture.” He shrugs. “Before I knew it, I was taking almost a full course load at Cooper Union and fielding telephone calls from writers between classes. Howard helped, but it was a mad, mad time until Delia came onboard and took over. What about you?”

Since I’m wasting the tuition-reimbursement job perk and I don’t have a Delia to make my time a little less mad, I stare at him, unsure of what the best-foot-forward answer to this question is. “Me?”

“How’d you wind up here? Did you always know you wanted to be a muckraker?”

I laugh at the very idea of my being a muckraker. I deal with bullshit twenty-four hours a day, but that doesn’t mean I’m bringing scandalous behavior to light. “I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I moved here from Bierlyville, Missouri, with my fabulous clips from the
Bierlyville Times
and my two suitcases. I only knew I wanted to work somewhere glamorous.
Fashionista
fit the bill.”

“Be careful what you wish for…” he says, trailing off.

I smile wisely to show I’ve learned my lesson, but I keep the embarrassing part to myself. I don’t let on that I used to believe that glamour could rub off, like fairy dust, if you stood shoulder to shoulder with it.

“Bierlyville, huh?” Alex asks, digging for information
about my upbringing. There aren’t many details to uncover, but I ramble for a few minutes anyway about Bierlyville, population 1,244—half of which are descendants of the Bierly corn barons who founded the town in 1873. Although Alex and I have seen a lot of each other in the last few weeks, this is the first time we’ve talked about our pasts. We usually stick to the here and now. This is how it works with emotionally unavailable men—if you don’t have a past, then you can’t have a future.

“There was only one traffic light, in the middle of town, and the only time you stopped at it was during your road test. The rest of the time it was decoration, like the blinking martini glass in front of the West Hollow Saloon,” I say.

When I’m done telling him about my short ignoble stint at the Dairy Queen (“Smaller scoops of ice cream, Ms. Morgan!”), Alex reciprocates. He regales me with stories from his childhood in suburban New Jersey. He’s funny and charming, and when it’s time to leave, he picks up the check. He pays the bill despite my protests and walks me home with my hand in his.

When we get to my door, I pause, gripping the keys tightly. My instinct is to invite him in. My instinct is to unlock the door and throw myself at him, but I’ve stood on this threshold too many times and for once I want to be wise.

Alex lowers his head and kisses me. His lips are soft and lush, and I lean my body into his. I wrap my arms around his neck. I run my fingers through his hair. I know I should pull away, but the cautious chant in my head (emotionally unavailable, emotionally unavailable) is muffled by his kiss. It’s silenced by his soft, lush lips, and I forget to be wise.

J
ane doesn’t hire a butler, although she does engage a man to oversee her affairs and call her mum. Stickly is imported from England and has a pedigree as thick as a dictionary. When Jane introduces him to the staff at a special meeting convened for this very purpose, she runs down the list of nobles he and his ancestors have served faithfully, an endeavor that quickly dwindles into an exercise in counting (George I, George II, George III, George IV, Harold I, Harold II, Elizabeth I). It seems that a Stickly was there at every significant English moment—Hastings, Culloden, the signing of the Magna Carta—to wipe a brow and offer a spot of tea. They have all the serendipity of a Forrest Gump, only without the philosophy and spread over generations.

Jane refers to him as a majordomo, which has more of a Gilbert and Sullivan ring to it than butler and appeals to her sense of drama. Stickly is a physically imposing man—he’s built like a quarterback, with large hands stuffed into white gloves like sausage casings—and has the air of someone who’s accustomed to running palaces. Our small offices on the
twenty-second floor do little to sharpen his skills—making a reservation at the Judson Grill is nothing like arranging a luncheon for the Duchess of Greater North Chesterborough—and he is forced to suffer the curse of most detail-oriented self-starters: too much downtime. Jane has given him a large corner office uncluttered with back issues and trade publications, but you often see him gossiping with Mrs. Beverly in her furnished corridor.

They are sitting together in a corner now as Lydia runs the weekly meeting. “Allison,” she says, “do you have that article on the plunging neckline we talked about?”

“Vig offered to do that for me,” she says, her eyes wide and innocent, as if she’s telling the truth. “She knows how swamped I am.”

Although this is the first I’m hearing of my generosity, I nod like I’m expecting this question. “I’m almost done. I just need to tweak it. What’s the final word count?”

Lydia consults her notes. It takes her a moment to locate the information. “It looks like it’s down to only three hundred words. Let’s have the copy in by the end of the day. Remember, the focus is on celebrities,” she says, as if I need such a reminder. The focus is never on anything else.

I add this article to the list of things I need to do before leaving for the day and begin to feel like Cinderella. There’s now so much on my plate that it’ll take a team of fairy godmothers to finish it all.

The weekly meeting, once a source of complete apathy, now elicits feelings of dread and apprehension. The first time Allison pawned her work off on me, I fought back. I demurred with a carefully worded reminder that I had been too busy to help out when she asked. Jane, who is always looking for ways to be a leader, made an example of my lack of responsibility. She did it loudly and emphatically and in front of the entire staff. This is the sort of thing she used to do to me every day when I was her assistant—humiliation is not a
private matter—and the memories it brought back were overwhelming. I spent the rest of the day fighting flashbacks and shivers.

“Marguerite, how are we doing on those bridesmaid dresses?” Lydia asks.

“Mrs. Beverly is going to pick up the last one today.” Marguerite looks at her factotum. “When will you get to it?”

“Actually, Stickly volunteered to go for me,” Mrs. Beverly says with a fond look at her friend. “He’s so very helpful.”

“Thank you, Stickly,” says Marguerite.

Stickly bows slightly. “Not at all, mum.”

Jane, who has been sitting at the conference table looking bored out of her mind, perks up. She doesn’t like her majordomo bowing at Marguerite and calling her mum and picking up her bridesmaid dresses. “Stickly doesn’t have time for running errands today.”

“I don’t, mum?”

“No, I need you to reorganize my files,” she says.

“I’ve already done that, mum.”

“My files in accounting,” she improvises quickly, before turning to Marguerite with a smug look. She doesn’t even know how to feign contrition. “I’m sorry but it’s an all-day task.”

“That’s all right,” says Mrs. Beverly. “I can pick up the dress myself. And, Elton, if you need help with those files, you just let me know.”

This spirit of bipartisan teamwork is not what
Fashionista
is about and both Jane and Marguerite try to squelch it in its infancy. There is a short, snappish discussion on the matter of just who exactly will be reorganizing the files in accounting and I wait for Allison to volunteer me for the job.

Although Stickly and Mrs. Beverly observe all this with identical expressions of placidity, I can’t help but feel that underneath their polite indifference they are horrified. They are horrified by Jane’s screeching and Marguerite’s snide coun
terblows and the way we watch as though spectators in the Colosseum. The two of them together are like an episode of
Upstairs, Downstairs
and sometimes you feel like a chambermaid from the lower quarters.